Berkeley, California (EastBayDaily) — Edswell today unveiled its flagship college planning platform for counselors, students, and parents, featuring patent-pending technology wrapped in a user-oriented interface. A free 30-day trial, as well as a video walk-through of the product, is available at http://www.edswell.com.

Edswell instantly summarizes all of the application essay requirements for a student's list, automatically organizes and version-controls each draft, and allows counselors and parents to track student progress. The company collects information for over 1,000 colleges and 2,500 essay requirements, including program-specific or "stealth" essays.

“The application essay has taken on an almost mythical status as a sort of rite of passage for students. It's stressful, for everyone involved. The last thing counselors, students, and parents should be worrying about is tracking down requirements and managing the twenty, thirty, forty different drafts buried in a folder or email account,” said Alex Thaler, Cofounder and author of "The Art of the Personal Statement."

EssayMap – Enables users to generate a PDF report of all of the application essay requirements for a school list with a single click. It often takes students days or weeks to find the essay requirements for their college lists; EssayMap delivers them in seconds.

College Search/List – Edswell’s college list feature emphasizes speed and ease-of-use. For each school in the database, the app tracks key admissions stats, such as SAT/ACT range, average GPA, and in-state/out-of-state tuition. Counselors can add schools to multiple students’ list at once, saving time and paving the way for more effective class management.

Essay Management – Edswell’s revolutionary essay management system, built on DropBox, automatically organizes, syncs, and version-controls every draft, without the need for files and folders. All drafts of an essay are organized in a feed-style format, allowing for easy comparison and tracking. A one-click invite feature allows students to invite anyone to review a draft. When reviewers send edited drafts back to Edswell, students can easily identify changes through the “Get Differences” feature, which automatically highlights revisions in a side-by-side comparison.

Counselor Dashboard – Before Edswell, counselors and parents had no way to track student progress throughout the essay drafting process. Now, information about college lists, required essays, and student status is fed into Edswell's counselor dashboard. Within the dashboard, users can quickly identify students who are falling behind, add schools to a student’s (or multiple students’) list, generate an EssayMap and email it to a student, or send email announcements to the class. Counselors and parents also have access to every draft in the system, including drafts submitted by reviewers.

For more information about Edswell, or to start a free 30-day trial, please visit http://www.edswell.com.